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A TRIBUTE 


TO 

THE MEMORY OF 

BRODERICK. 


KING & BAIRD, PRINTERS, SANSOM ST., PHILADA. 
















A 


FUNERAL ORATION 

UPON 

/ 

DAVID C. BRODERICK, 


LATE SENATOR FROM CALIFORNIA, 


DELIVERED 


AT THE CHAPEL OF THE NEW-YORK UNIVERSITY, 

On Sunday Evening, Nov. 20tli, 18S9. 

u. 

By JOHN W.' DWINELLE, Esq., 

I, 


OF ROCHESTER, N. Y. 



ROCHESTER: 

BENTON & ANDREWS, BUFFALO STREET. 

1859. 



lE>/ur 

1 

28340 


Mr. Broderick was mortally wounded in a political duel, near 
San Francisco, California, just after the close of the September election 
in that State, in 1859, and died three days afterwards. 






ADDRESS. 


Citizens of New- York :—Nine weeks ago to-day the fairest city 
that ever adorned the coast of the Pacific, presented a singular and im¬ 
pressive spectacle. In the midst of the city a vast concourse was assem¬ 
bled, and before them, dead in his coffin, lay a Senator of the United 
States. Over him, in strains of more than Roman eloquence, a gifted 
orator recited the record of his virtues, the struggles of his life, the vic¬ 
tories of his patriotism, and the history of his sudden and untimely death. 
Then, with one impulse, the great multitude lifted up the bloody bier, 
and without the peal of music, or the flaunting of banners, or military 
pageantry, but with the majestic silence of grief, and with a noiseless 
tread like that of the “ innumerable caravan ” of the dead, wended its 
slow and solemn way up to the heights \vhere the Lone Mountain marks 
the silent Necropolis; and there, looking down at once upon the great 
rivers of the interior, upon the majestic stream which pours its outflow 
through the portals of the Golden Gate, and upon the placid Pacific, 
the Church, with averted face, consigned its son to the eternal tomb. 
To-day, this great metropolis, washed by the waters of the other ocean, 
pours out her thousands in honor of the same illustrious dead. The 
fact suggests inquiry. Who, then, was this Senator of the United 
States, whose memory thus vibrates on the heart-strings of a people 
across a whole continent; who thus receives those honors hitherto 
bestowed only upon the great senatorial names of Clay, Calhoun, 
Webster and Benton ? Who was this man, whose funeral obsequies are 
thus celebrated on either ocean ? He was one who, twenty years ago, 
in this city, worked at the daily toil of a stone-cutter’s apprentice, but 
who, orphaned, poor, unaided by accident, unfriended by wealth and 
power, lived to become a cultivated and educated man, a leader among 
his distinguished compeers, and finally attained a position in our gov¬ 
ernment only second to that of the Presidency. Of this man I have 
come to speak to you. He was for a long time your fellow-citizen. It 
was here that he endured the severest privations of his early life; it 
was here that he formed that high resolve which lifted him from the 
obscurity of his first condition; it was here that he took the first step 
upon the great, difficult ladder of fame which he so successfully 




4 


•ascended; it was your kindness which first cheered his hopeful heart; 
it was your support which stimulated him to his noblest efforts; and 
when, at the end of his probation, he went out into a larger field of 
action, competent to cope with men of greater advantages, of larger 
experience, and of equal intellect, he was as much your work as his 
own. For the people of this city he ever felt the deepest gratitude and 
the warmest affection. I am certain that the highest personal ambition 
of his life was fully gratified when he returned here, clothed with sena¬ 
torial honors, justifying your early support, and more than fulfilling 
your fondest predictions. 

Of this man, who, in many of the most essential elements of great¬ 
ness, was fully equal to any of the illustrious men whose names 1 have 
just mentioned, I come to speak with such preparation as circumstances 
have permitted to me. For I knew him well. Six years we lived 
together as citizens of San Francisco—six years the most important to 
him of any period of his life. Originally prejudiced against him by 
the slanders which clouded his life and pierced his heart, I first learned 
to respect him for qualities the reverse of those which had been attrib¬ 
uted to him; next I admired his firmness, his frankness, his careless 
bravery; and finally his gentleness and magnanimity won my regard, 
and “ I became his captive for life.” But it was as his personal, and 
not as his political friend. In politics we rarely acted together, but 
often opposed; and when we made a common cause, it w r as only be¬ 
cause our circles came into contact; they never coincided, or even inter¬ 
sected ; our stand-points were different. It is then as his personal friend 
that I come here to speak his eulogy. In doing so, I intend to avoid 
all allusions to the transient politics of the day; the only politics to 
which I shall refer, will be that which involves the science of good gov¬ 
ernment and devotion to principle. I shall not even attempt to pass 
upon or characterize the great political measures to which he lent his 
support, and for which lie was willing to sacrifice his life. I see too 
many shades of political opinion represented before me to expect any 
unanimity on such points, and a want of taste in this respect w r ould 
raise too many side issues to impair the teachings of the great lesson of 
his life, and obscure the moral of his death. With these preliminaries, 
which I trust do not exceed the privilege of personal explanation, I 
bring my offering to the grave of the departed. 

David Colberth Broderick was born in the City of Washington, 
in February, 1819. His father, an Irish immigrant, was a stone-cutter 
in that city; an honest, industrious artisan, respected and withal some¬ 
what prosperous in his vocation. It was with a mournful pride that his 
son, then a Senator of the United States, years afterwards pointed to 
the capitals surmounting the pilasters which adorned the Senate Cham¬ 
ber, as bearing the marks of his father’s chisel. From some cause the 
elder Broderick removed with his family to this city, where he died in 
1837, transmitting no heritage to his children, but that of an honest 
name, and leaving David, a youth of eighteen, charged with the sup¬ 
port of his mother and of a younger brother. The death of his mother 
followed soon afterwards, and a terrible catastrophe, which deprived his 



5 


brother of life, left David alone in the world, with no reocgnizable kin¬ 
dred, and made a melancholy and profound impression upon his char¬ 
acter. Obtaining a release from the indentures into which he had en¬ 
tered with a master stone-cutter, and being advised by his physician 
that that occupation would be injurious, and probably fatally so, to his 
health, he abandoned that laborious calling, which afterwards, in the 
Senate of the United States, he described as “ one of the most labori¬ 
ous mechanical trades pursued by man—a trade that by its nature 
devotes its follower to thought, but debars him from conversation.” 
Meanwhile, he had created so favorable an impression of his personal 
worthiness, as well as of his integrity, perseverance, and business capac¬ 
ity, that means were furnished him to open one of those large, well- 
appointed houses, partaking of the nature of a political club-room and 
of a public house—a social feature peculiar to New-York. Mr. Brod¬ 
erick, although the proprietor, was not the personal administrator of 
this establishment; while his employees carried out its details, he was 
engaged with his studies in an upper apartmeut, or occupied himself 
with social or political intercourse. In this enterprise lies the sole basis 
of the charge of “ keeping a grog-shop,” which has sometimes been 
brought against Mr. Broderick ; an accusation which, as involving the 
charge of being the proprietor of an establishment where wines and 
liquors are sold for social purposes, might with equal honesty be 
brought against the proprietors of all the great public houses of the 
United States and of Europe. This imputation we therefore pass now 
and forever. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Broderick’s reputation had grown beyond the 
boundaries to which his modesty had confined his operations, and he 
had become an acknowledged power in the political organization of his 
party. With this recognition of merit, came a tender of its common 
and ordinarily expected rewards, and he was successively offered nomi¬ 
nations to each board of the City Council, and to the Assembly and 
Senate of this State. These he declined. In 1846, as a means of 
usefulness and discipline, he consented to be elected to a Convention 
called by an act of the Legislature for the purpose of forming a new 
charter for the City of New-York; of which body he was an active 
and efficient member; and, although the youngest delegate, he was 
often called to the chair, to preside over its deliberations. But with 
increased knowledge, and with a consciousness of improved capacity 
and power, he had attained to the ambition for a seat in the national 
councils. At the age of twenty-seven, in the year 1846, this cherished 
object seemed within his grasp; he was nominated for the office of 
Representative in Congress, but was defeated by a division of the vote 
of his party in his district. But in this contest, the men of his own 
original class, the artisans, the mechanics, those whom he had be¬ 
friended with his money, with his advice, with his personal counte¬ 
nance and assistance, it is worthy of remark, as equally creditable to 
them as to him, were true to his support. 

In 1848, the first discovery of gold was made in California, and the 
tidings snread with the rapidity of an electric flash over the world. 


6 


Mr. Broderick, without crediting the more than Arabian fables which 
accompanied the announcement of the discovery, with his intuitive 
powers of rapid analysis and recombination, at once satisfied himself 
that the gold production of California was an undoubted fact, which, 
whether brief or long continued, must bring at once into rapid and 
prosperous development the great agricultural and commercial resources 
of that country, with which he had become acquainted in the accounts 
of the explorations of Wilkes and Fremont. To that new empire of 
the Pacific—a worthless desert to most observers, but to his prophetic 
eye swarming with an energetic population—Anglo-Saxon in laws and 
language and in political affiliation, if not in blood—in sorrow and yet 
in hope he betook himself. In sorrow, at the disruption of so many 
ties of friendship and of genial association; in hope, that when the 
vortex of political chaos should have subsided, the strongest in will, in 
discipline, and in acquirement, might ride the topmost wave. 

In the Autumn of 1849, we find him laboring at San Francisco as 
an assayer of gold, in the garb of an artisan, yet rapidly accumulating 
the wealth which wholly relieved him from the bondage of his early 
years. In 1850 he was elected to the Senate of California, from the 
District of San Francisco, for the period of two years; in 1851 he was 
elected President of the Senate, to fill the vacancy in that office caused 
by the promotion of Lieut. Governor McDougal to the office of Gov¬ 
ernor, upon the resignation of Gov. Burnett. At the close of that 
year, Gov. McDougal resigning his office for a special purpose, Mr. 
Broderick became, for a short time, the actual Governor of the State; 
hut, modestly shrinking from the notoriety of an accidental position, he 
desired that the fact might not be made public unless some executive 
emergency should make it necessary; and, none such occurring, the 
fact did not transpire until long after the event. In 1852 he was again 
elected to the Senate of California; and in this year, and also in the 
years 1853 and 1854, his friends made unsuccessful efforts to elect him 
to the Senate of the United States. In 1856 he succeeded in this effort 
of his ambition, and took his seat for the full term of six years, in 1857. 
In September, 1859, he was numbered with the dead. 

Such is a brief epitome of the history of David C. Broderick. 
Should we leave it here, it would provoke both inquiry and surprise. 
It would be asked: “ How, then, was this humble artisan advanced 
from this lowly to this high position ? Did he progress from one point 
to another by the mere succession of one year to another ? Or, as the 
wave of emigration cast him upon the Pacific shore, did its merely 
blind and senseless political reflux cast him back again into the Senate 
of the United States?” 

Broderick was no favorite of fortune. She never smiled upon him. 
Her favors were extorted by conquest, never granted willingly. He 
became great because he first appreciated his own weakness; he became 
accomplished because he recognized his own deficiencies. When, as an 
artisan’s apprentice, he first reflected upon the uncongenial toil to which 
he seemed hopelessly condemned, upon the high mental and moral en¬ 
joyment which education and culture bring to their possessors, upon the 


i 


conquests of discipline and skill; when he determined that he, too, 
would become learned, and cultivated, and disciplined, such were his 
force of will and power of perseverance, that the victory over adverse 
fortune was already half accomplished. A business which occupied 
but little of his time gave him ample leisure for study and opportunity 
for thought; he exhausted vast treasures of reading, and cultivated the 
acquaintance of learned and gifted men. If learning is, in any sense, 
power; if the object of education is, indeed, the acquisition of skill; if 
he who has attained this knowledge, and has disciplined himself to its 
skillful use, may be called educated, then was Broderick an educated 
man before he went to California in 1849. 

Arriving at San Francisco, he found himself in a new position. He 
was completely emancipated from the fetters of tradition and associa¬ 
tion which had hitherto confined him. The elements of a great politi¬ 
cal and commercial empire floated in chaotic disorder around him. The 
Hispano-Mexican dominion had sunk under the spear of conquest, and 
the country, without passing through the territorial condition, existed 
under the abnormal pupilage of a military pro-consulship, ready to 
emerge into the complete sovereignty of a Constitutional State. How 
he here experienced the vigor of a new youth, how he felt himself 
equal to every political and personal emergency, the epitome of his 
history, which I have already given, sufficiently shows. 

But when I cast my eyes over this crowded audience, most of whom 
have come here to honor the obsequies of one whom they knew and 
respected, the reflection strikes me forcibly, how few there are, even 
here, who really knew David C. Broderick. True, you knew the 
exterior of the man as he was ten years ago, his daily appearance, his 
outward deportment, his general acquirements; but few, indeed, were 
aware of the stores of information, and treasures of culture which, by 
patient study and modest industry, he had already amassed. But how 
few knew him as he was after the last ten years of his life had done 
their work upon him—the ten years which he spent upon the Pacific 
coast! Ten years constitute a large portion of the life of any man— 
whether they be years of sickness or of health, of hopeless toil or of 
well-directed mental culture. Ten years is a longer period than that 
which is usually devoted to the academic and special education which 
is supposed to qualify a young man for any one of the learned profes¬ 
sions. We leave the mere child reading a toy-book at bis mother’s 
knee—we return at the end of ten years, and find that he has already 
become a prominent merchant, or is a promising divine; he is a success¬ 
ful advocate or a leading politician. Is it to be supposed that a period 
of ten years could be lost to the life of such a man as Broderick ? If 
while he was here, slowly and painfully emerging from the forced toil 
and ungenial obscurity of his early life, he still devoted his nights to 
laborious study, and his days to earnest thought—is it to be believed 
+hat when he had reached a land where there existed no prejudices 
against his early condition, where the paths to political distinction 
opened themselves to him with a welcome invitation, and where sudden 
affluence relieved his life from the carking cares of business—is it to be 


8 


believed that when those studies, that mental discipline, that careful cul¬ 
tivation, which before were so genial to him, had now bocome a neces¬ 
sity of his position, he would renounce them all, and, instead of advan¬ 
cing, retrograde? The supposition was as absurd as it was variant 
from the fact. Instead of abandoning his studies, he enlarged their 
scope, deepening the foundations of his knowledge, and widening its 
range. And so Time brought to him a rich harvest of those fruits 
which she promises to assiduous cultivation. Ten years of patient 
study, ten years of daily converse with the exemplars of English liter¬ 
ature, ten years of parliamentary discipline and of political leadership, 
shed their refining and exalting influence upon his character and posi¬ 
tion ; and so, when, at the expiration of his term of voluntary exile, he 
again landed upon your shores, clothed with the dignity of a Senator 
of the United States, his acquirements, his manners, and the conscious 
pride of his bearing, fully justified the choice of his adopted State. Yet 
even among those who knew him well, there were but few who sus¬ 
pected the extent of his attainments. He was no pedant, flaunting 
his memorized reading in society; he was no literary coxcomb, vainly 
parading the treasures which he could not appreciate; but one who 
cultivated a modest pride in concealing the vast additions which he had 
made to his stores of information and culture. In this connection I 
shall make no apology for citing what has been written of him by one 
who knew and loved him well, himself an accomplished gentleman and 
an elegant scholar, the Hon. Frank Soule, of San Francisco : 

“Few people, even of those who were on intimate and friendly per¬ 
sonal relations with Mr. Broderick, were aware of the extent of his 
reading, or of his varied and thorough acquirements. The politician 
and the ambitious man of the world, as he appeared to most people, was 
the worst side of his character. His intellect was of the quickest and 
most comprehensive order, and his will was so powerful as to enable 
him to concentrate his whole mind on any given subject. Hence, in 
the midst of the most exciting political contest, he could at will 
withdraw his mind from it, and give the closest attention to whatever 
he was reading. His active intellect compelled him to read, for he had 
little relish for vulgar amusements, and his tastes always inclined him 
to be very much alone. He was almost an ascetic in his life and habits. 
His passions and appetites were as completely subject to his will as ever 
were Napoleon Bonaparte’s. Accordingly, he read immensely. Of 
classic English literature he had read everything; and what he read, he 
analyzed, weighed and considered. His nights were spent over the 
works of the ‘grand old masters.’ 

“No one who did not know him intimately, would have supposed, 
on meeting him in the street, that he had spent half of the night pre¬ 
vious in reading the most abstruse poetry. Yet very likely such was the 
fact. The works of all the great poets were as familiar to him as 
household words. His tastes led him to admire the weird-like, subtle, 
and mysterious. Of all English poets,he especially admired the mystic, 
spiritual, incomprehensible Shelley. Tennyson, too, was a great favorite 
of his ; so was Wordsworth. But how few of those who supposed 


9 


they knew him well, had any idea of his rich stores of classic knowledge! 
He had such a disgust and aversion to anything looking like pedantry 
or affectation, that only very few, and those his most intimate and 
trusted friends, were aware how extensive was his reading and how 
general his knowledge of books and men. He also felt his want of 
early education, and distrusted himself very much when books and 
literature were under discussion. Yet, as he grew older, and came more 
in contact with men, he more fully appreciated his own powers; and, 
had he lived, he would have attained a high position in other fields than 
that of politics.” 

This, be it observed, is the testimony of a personal and not of a 
political friend. The same gentleman also writes as follows : “ In 
speaking of the habits and tastes of the honored dead, I speak that I 
do know. I have seen many men of eminence, and have looked upon 
the faces of nearly all the great men of this generation; and in all the 
qualities that make up the hero, whom men admire for courage, nerve, 
and unhesitating devotion to principle, I have seen none who equalled 
David 0. Broderick. 

“During a long personal intimacy, I can recollect no act unworthy 
of a man—nothing that either party would object to having the whole 
world informed of. I have walked the streets for hours with him when 
the world was wrapt in slumber, and conversed on every conceivable 
subject, but have never known him to give expression to a low or 
ignoble thought. I was his friend, and knowing him so well, shall 
cherish with pride his memory to the last.” 

If we now turn to the contemplation of the qualities which fitted 
him eminently for a political leader, we find them strongly marked and 
conspicuous. He had a scorn of falsehood and prevarication which it 
exceeded the power of language to express. He had a love of truth, a 
directness of purpose, a simplicity of manner impressing conviction on 
all ingenuous minds, and confounding the craft of his opponents. He 
had a bold, outspoken frankness, a tenacity of purpose, an indomitable 
will, and an unflinching bravery, which commanded admiration and 
often conquered success, even when they did not win conviction. He 
was quick of perception, ready in resource, faithful in friendship, true 
to his pledges, consistent in principle. Withal, he was placid in demeanor; 
his smile was winning, and the natural tones of his voice in conversa¬ 
tion, often as gentle as those of a woman. In morals he was pure, far 
beyond the common standard of public men. In his last campaign in 
California, when he felt the wing of the messenger of death fluttering 
over him, he said on one occasion in public : “ The man is not living 
or dead who ever saw me at a gambling table, or in a brothel, or under 
the in.iuence of intoxicating drink.” This mingled boast and defiance 
was a proud one, and the assertion was true. If we may not say 
there are few who can truly say the same, we can yet declare how many 
there are among the statesmen of the world who cannot truly make 
the same proud and truthful boast! But if he had great merits, he 
had great defects also. He was often too open and free of expression, 
sometimes employing unmeasured denunciation, when silent contempt 
2 


10 


would have been equally or even more effective. He was often too 
bold, too fond of effecting by sheer force of will, what might have been 
equally well accomplished with more moderation. His openness pre¬ 
vented him at times from a cautious withholding of his plans until they 
were sufficiently ripe, and made them liable to surprise and counterplot. 
He was too magnanimous; he could not believe that the same generosity 
which would conquer himself, would not subdue others. He was too 
often deceived by those who came to him wfith professions of friendship 
or repentance; when he forgave an offence, he seemed to forget that it 
had ever been committed, although the injury might have involved 
treachery to himself or a betrayal of his confidence. He was sometimes 
imperious even beyond the privilege of a party leader; he often offended, 
and sometimes estranged those who thought that even in the emergen¬ 
cies of an unexpected crisis, they ought to be consulted. This last, how¬ 
ever, was not owing to a defect of temper, hut to a principle which 
Broderick assumed, that to he a leader, one must be acknowledged as 
qualified to had, and that in a sudden crisis, he becomes a dictator so far 
as regards the parliamentary or personal tactics of his party. He 
sometimes made great mistakes, but they were errors of policy and 
tactics; they never involved consistency of purpose or of principle. These 
were his greatest faults, hut even these were the faults of a great, 
generous nature, “ whose very failings leaned to virtue’s side.” 

It was, doubtless, fortunate for his country, although a source of mel¬ 
ancholy to him, that Broderick became isolated, w r ith no kindred to par¬ 
ticipate in his fortune and his success—that he had no wife or children 
to share in his affections, or to distract his purposes. The man lost in 
domestic enjoyment, hut the public gained in the efforts of his undivided 
patriotism and singleness of purpose. Simple of tastes, with no ex¬ 
pensive habits, and disbursing more for purposes of religion and charity 
than was demanded for all the other outlays of his life — whether per¬ 
sonal, political, literary or aesthetic—he was above corruption, because 
he was superior to avarice or to the lust or necessity of gain; and the 
only temptations to which he was subject as a public man, were the 
stimulus of a patriotic ambition, and the cravings for an honest fame. 

It has been brought as a serious charge of inconsistency against 
Broderick, that his avowed convictions in regard to the existence of 
slavery in the territories, were of recent origin. I do not think that I 
violate the proprieties of this occasion, or the programme which I have 
laid down, by stating that he committed himself, at almost the outset of 
his political career in California, to the same principle. In the year 
1852, a statute was passed by the Legislature of that State, enacting 
that any slaveholder who had voluntarily taken his slaves into Cali¬ 
fornia under the Mexican dominion or laws, with the intention of resid¬ 
ing there, and had thus given them, what was, at that time, held to be 
an implied manumission, might still revoke the act and return them into 
slavery. Broderick, who was then in the Senate of California, opposed 
to the end the passage of this law; thus not only invoking the specific 
personal opposition which he encountered during the rest of his life, but 
proclaiming long in advance those views of constitutional law in whose 


11 


faith he lived and died. I mention this merely as a biograpical fact, 
without wishing to make or elicit any expression as to the political 
principle involved. 

Such being the man, such the noble earnestness with which he had 
raised himself from an humble, but not ignoble position, it was the grief 
of his great heart that he was, to the end of his life, pursued with the 
most malignant slanders. The purity of his personal life could not be 
assailed, and he was therefore accused of coarseness and brutality of 
manners, and in terms of the most derogatory slang. Broderick had 
been a fireman in early life, and the foreman of a fire company, and 
the malice of slander degraded him to the level, and ascribed to him 
the tastes and manners of an imaginary fireman — of such a nondescript 
brute as would not be suffered even to approach an engine house. Not 
that this was directly asserted, but rather insinuated by the systematic 
and repeated use of the terms I have indicated, until many good men 
came to be prejudiced by them. A most respectable member of the 
last Congress, not a political coadjutor of Mr. Broderick, said to me a 
few days ago : “ I expected to find something of the * rowdy ’ in Brod¬ 
erick, but I found him very gentlemanly, and of very mild and pleasant 
manners. He had no vices; he was even indisposed to festivities of any 
kind. One thing impressed me very much, the strong conviction of 
his perfect truth and candor, which every thing he said carried with it. 
He formed his opinions very rapidly, and when once formed, nothing 
could turn him from them. I liked Broderick.” 

Another gentleman, also differing from Mr. Broderick in politics, 
said to me : “I went into the Senate of the United States alone to see 
how many Senators I could recognize from the descriptions I had 
read. Some I recognized, but I found no one answering my idea of the 
* rowdy Senator’ Broderick. I was, however, so much impressed with 
the appearance of one large, fine-looking, gentlemanly man, that I asked 
his name. That was Broderick !” 

A Senator of the United States, a political opponent of Mr. Brod¬ 
erick, bears this testimony: “We were members of the same committee. 
Our acquaintance ripened into sincere friendship. He was a man of 
marked characteristics. He impressed upon me the conviction that he 
was a man of iron will, inflexible resolution, indomitable perseverance, 
and of undoubted courage, truthfulness, and sincerity. He was a man 
of nice sense of honor and justice; he despised meanness and dishon¬ 
esty; ho was plain and outspoken in the expression of his opinions. 
For him I entertained sentiments of respect and affection; I deeply 
deplore his death, and shall ever cherish his memory.” 

Such were the prejudices which Broderick had to encounter, and 
over which he was ever victorious; such the respect which he conquered; 
such the warm personal affection which he inspired among those who 
knew him best; such the tributes which strangers and mere acquaintances 
and sorrowing friends bring to the tomb of the dead Senator. 

This is the proper time, and perhaps the last available occasion, to 
enter a protest against several harsh judgments which have been called 
out by the late catastrophe; and I now protest against them as an 


12 


American citizen, as a friend of Senator Broderick, and as one who 
was formerly a citizen of California. Listen to the language of an 
educated Englishman, in reference to this very matter — one who is no 
bigot, but a true cosmopolite, liberal in his views, catholic in criticism, 
genial and well informed :— 

“That California is, in all the essential points of civilization, at least 
a half a century behind the States upon the Atlantic shores, is a truth 
of which most of us have hitherto had a vague consciousness. But the 
duel, the news of which has reached us during the past week, has 
impressed that truth upon us with a sudden, clear and deep impression. 
We see a Senator of the United States openly and deliberately shot to 
death by a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in a duel which was 
known to have been for sometime impending, and which was witnessed 
by nearly a hundred spectators. * * * * * 

Now the fact that one of the parties to such an encounter as this is a 
Senator, and the other a Chief Justice, and that they met with seconds, 
and fired at the word, does in no whit elevate it essentially above a 
murderous street fight. ******* 
When we reflect, too, that the encounter was not the consequence of 
differences strictly personal, but merely of what may be called political 
personalties between the Senator and the Judge, we see yet more clearly 
how low must be the moral tone, and how unrestrained the passions of 
a community in which such a quarrel could take place, and be openly 
pushed to such a bloody arbitration.” 

Let us test for a moment the truth insinuated in this sarcastic taunt. 
If, from the long array of eminent politicians and able statesman who 
ruled the destinies of the British empire for the period of thirty years, 
from the year 1800 to 1880, we should select a list of eight persons, how 
could we form a more brilliant constellation than by accepting the names 
of Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Castlereagh, O’Connell, Wellington and Peel? 
If a hundred well-read students of history — if any hundred well- 
informed Englishmen — were to make such a selection, at least six of 
these names would be found on every list. For these men were the 
“bright and particular stars” of the period of English history which 
they illustrated. They were all men of education, of high social and 
political position, genial and humane. And yet all these men submitted 
themselves to the law of the duello. Sheridan fought Mathews in 1772; 
Pitt fought Tierney in 1798; Fox fought Adam in 1779; Lord Castle¬ 
reagh fought Canning in 1809; O’Connell fought and killed D’Esterre 
in 1815; Wellington challenged and fought the Earl of Winchelsea in 
1829, and Peel challenged O’Connell in 1830. All of these duels, 
except that of Sheridan, were strictly political duels, growing out of 
political speeches or publications. It is, moreover, worthy of particular 
remark, that in two of the most prominent of these instances—that of 
Wellington and Winchelsea, and that of O’Connell and D’Esterre—there 
was really no ground for challenge which the challenged party was 
bound to admit as valid. But the Duke of Wellington having said in 
the House of Lords, “ If I could avoid, by any sacrifice whatever, even 
one month of civil war in this country, I would sacrifice my life in 


vs 


order to do it;” and the Earl of Winchelsea afterwards using expres¬ 
sions which the Duke thought had a tendency to provoke a civil war, 
Wellington, acting under a feeling of conscientious patriotism, and official 
responsibility, whose integrity and earnestness have never been disputed, 
challenged the Earl, and did his best to kill him on the field. When 
O’Connell called the Corporation of Dublin a “beggarly Corporation,” 
and was challenged by D’Esterre, a member of that Corporation, he 
might have avoided the duel by pleading the impersonality of the offen¬ 
sive language. But he accepted the challenge, saying: “ This seems to 
me not a personal, but a political affair. I am obnoxious to a party, and 
they adopt a false pretense to cut me off. I shall not submit to it. 
They have reckoned without their host.” And he killed his adversary 
at the first fire. With these instances before us, I think we may well 
retort the taunt, and ask: Is it true, then, that England has only just 
thirty years emerged from the lowest state of barbarism ? Is it true, 
that if Lord Palmerston should, in one instance, indulge in the 

sports formerly practiced by the chiefs under whom he held office, the 

British people could be justly stigmatized as savages ? Is it true, that 
the people of the State of New-York, among whom the duello has not 
been practiced for the last fifty years, are, therefore, twenty years in 

advance of the English in civilization and refinement? Or, is it not 

rather true, that the duel is to be judged as an exceptional institution, 
and that its results are to be characterized as the consequence of mur¬ 
der, cowardice, self-defence, or patriotism even, according to the exigen¬ 
cies or circumstances of the particular case ? 

I protest, again, against the assumption often made, and sometimes 
even admitted by the friends of Senator Broderick, that he needlessly 
submitted himself to the law of the duel, or that he carelessly exposed 
his life in this particular instance. The recognition of this institution 
by him was imperative. It was the necessity of his condition as a 
political leader in California. He could not have retained either position 
or influence a moment, without acknowledging himself answerable to 
such appeals. It was within his option, indeed, to accept or reject that 
leadership, but when he once accepted it, he took it with all its incidents. 
If the cause whose championship he undertook was worth, in his esti¬ 
mation, a thousand lives, then was he justified in exposing his own life 
in his hand—“pinning his heart upon his sleeve for all men to pluck at.” 
If, when some three or four years ago, a gallant young representative 
in Congress from the North, whose sentiments and religious views ren¬ 
dered him averse to the arbitrament of the duel, still, when that test 
was imposed as the condition of free speech and of legislative liberty, an¬ 
nounced his determination to accept it and to abide the issue—the whole 
nation, without shade of political partizanship, applauded the act; shall 
we find it difficult to pardon Broderick that he acknowledged a law 
which he did not make, one to which his opponents were amenable, and 
one which protected him from violence until the great political battle in 
which he was engaged was terminated ? If we visit our censures se¬ 
verely anywhere, let it be upon those who sustain this institution by 
their social sentiment; upon the political community whose legislative 


14 


statutes express a higher morality than do the habits of their lives. I 
raise no issue here as to the cause or conduct of the fatal encounter 
in which he lost his life; he felt that he stood in a charmed circle out 
of which he could only fight his way; possibly he might have effectively 
denied the right of this particular adversary to call him to the deadly 
combat, but it was characteristic of his magnanimous courage that he 
accepted the first issue which was tendered to him. What mattered it 
to him before whose pistol he was to stand, or before whose fatal fire 
he was to go down ? 

I protest, again, in behalf of the fair fame of California, against the 
unnecessary continuance of this deadly custom. I understand well, for 
personal experience has taught me that, that when the necessities or 
customs of a country demand that private citizens should carry arms, 
the custom of the duel arises as a measure of self-protection, as substi¬ 
tuting a more regulated violence for the fatal issue often following rap¬ 
idly upon hot words, or for the hasty tragedy of street encounters. It 
is some protection to one’s life, that when the pistol is pointed to his 
heart, or he is proffered the arbitrament of a fight in the street, he can 
calmly invoke the benefits of a regulated code, claiming the advantage 
of delay, the interposition of friends, and of something like an equali¬ 
zation of chances. Certainly the condition of the duel is something 
better than the others which I have described, although I do not pretend 
that it is more infallible in awarding its issues than other human insti¬ 
tutions are. Such was, for a long time, the condition of California. But 
that condition has now changed. Every element of a high civilization 
has been introduced, and in all that marks the highest point of progress, 
San Francisco will compare well with her older sisters. Why, then, 
should this custom prevail, when its only possible justification has 
utterly vanished? Why should San Francisco and California, by per¬ 
mitting this institution to continue, still proclaim to the world that 
such a social necessity exists, when in fact there is no longer the least 
occasion for it ? Why longer tolerate a custom so confessedly unequal 
in its events—which exposes fhe brave to the mercy of the coward, 
the strong to the weak, the good to the worthless, the inexpert to the 
“ trained trick of the weapon ?” 

At the close of the last session of Congress, Mr. Broderick was 
urged by many of his friends to employ the recess in a visit to Europe. 
Such a diversion would have been very grateful to him. While but a 
boy, he had proposed such a tour as one of the possible, but scarcely 
looked-for, achievements of his life; but now, as a man, as a politician, 
and as a growing statesman, qualified by extensive reading, and by a 
careful study of history, such a visit would be interesting in observation, 
fruitful in suggestion, and valuable in result. Secure for the next four 
years in his senatorial position, and wearied with the toils of an unsuc¬ 
cessful campaign, a less brave or a less conscientious politician, would have 
evaded the struggle of the coming election in California, in which he 
could have hardly hoped to succeed. Not so with Broderick. He 
not only renounced the cherished pleasure of his life, but accepted the 
alternative, although he clearly saw defeat in the issue, and death in 


the vanishing point of the vista. He had already not only settled in 
his own mind where his duty lay, hut had, wisely or unwisely, deter¬ 
mined the nature of the contest.* It was to be one thickly studded with 
personal issues, and in those issues he saw abundantly sown the seeds of 
death. Against all the weapons which would surely seek his life, he 
could not even hope to stand—it was even almost “hoping against hope” 
to expect that he could defer the personal sacrifice until after the political 
contest had been terminated. And so when Broderick slowly passed 
out of the Senate Chamber—which he felt that he was never to enter 
again—so, when the golden cross of Trinity reflected to him for the 
last time the gleam of the setting sun, as city, and island, and coast 
sank down in the deepening twilight into the obscurity of ocean, and 
he departed for the last time to his loved Pacific State, to enter upon his 
last contest, feeling that the black messenger of death fluttered over him 
with its inevitable message, I cannot conceive, or draw from history or 
fable a spectacle more mournful or sublime. For this consciousness of 
the coming catastrophe was not a mere superstitious presentiment, the 
nightmare of shattered nerves, of a disordered imagination, or of a 
weak intellect, but the conclusion of a sound judgment, acting clearly 
and deliberately, and as certainly as upon the ordinary business of life, 
“ foreseeing the end from the beginning.” 

To what, then, shall we liken his procession to the final sacrifice ? 
Not, certainly, to the sudden impulse which hurled Curtius into the 
gulf which opened to swallow up the destinies of Rome; not to the 
desperate valor of Leonidas, which hoped for vengeance rather than 
for success; but rather to the self-immolation of some greater hero, who 
binds the sacrificial wreath upon his own brows, and extends himself as 
a victim upon the altar; rather to some Prometheus, even more sub¬ 
lime than the conception of the poet, chaining himself to the cold and 
solitary summit of Caucasus, and offering his own breast to the eternal 
vulture. “You will see me no more!” was his mournful prediction to 
a friend who grasped his hand for the last time upon the departing 
steamer. Alas! how his heart was wrung to utter those words of 
hopeless farewell! So, when the death-bolt had reached him, and his 
mournful presentiment was fulfilled, how noble was the feeling which 
prompted him to suppress all personal resentment, and to express only 
the regret that the leadership of his party was struck down with him : 
“ Let my friends take courage by my example, and, if need be, die like 
me. Let it not be believed that my death resulted from a few idle 


* Most unwisely , beyond a doubt. He weakened his cause by mixing personal 
with political issues; lie was more than unwise in one instance, in arraigning the 
living upon a rumored accusation by the dead. This last campaign embodied 
at once the greatest victory, and the second and last, great mistake of his life : 
for, while he conquered prejudice, and exalted himself before the people as an 
able and popular debater, and a fearless champion of his political principles, he 
yet invoked his own destruction by the programme which he adopted. His 
presentiment of its fatality to himself was so strong, that, before leaving New- 
York, he designated the two gentlemen whom he wished to announce his death 
in the two houses of Congress. 





16 


words, or from anything hut my political position.” Such were his 
dying words; such most undoubtedly, his dying conviction; and, if 
these indicate the lofty purpose with which he accepted the call to the 
deadly field, I do not see how he could have avoided that issue. As a 
Christian man, with a horror of murder that I cannot express, and 
with a clear perception of all the circumstances, I still cannot see how 
Broderick could have retained his leadership, and have declined the 
fight. Doubtless, his purposes and his mental conflict are well embod¬ 
ied in the language of the great German: “ Here I stand—I cannot do 
otherwise; God help me!” 

And as to that leadership, thus borne to the ground in the fall of 
Broderick— of him who always took courage even from defeat, and, 
like his kindred Titans, borrowed renewed strength from contact w ith 
his mother Earth, even though hurled to her bosom—of that leader¬ 
ship it needs no political sympathy, but only admiration of personal 
courage and chivalrous gallantry, for us to speak in fitting terms. All 
true sons of honor and of chivalry confess 

‘‘The true joy -which warriors feel 
In foemen worthy of their steel;” 

and the great politicians, the great statesmen of the land, acknowledge 
the same feeling, and pay the same tribute to the trusted virtues of 
honesty, truth, fortitude, and courage. So his brave adversaries with 
sorrow saw the sun of Charles XII go down into everlasting night at 
Pultowa; so grieved even the enemies of Gustavus Adolphus over his 
untimely fate at Lutzen; so would all the Catholic knighthood of 
Europe have lamented if the w 7 hite plume of Henry had sunk beneath 
the foremost w T ave of battle afrlvry; so mourn the true chivalry of 
America over the fall of Broderick, even though to their opponents 
and to his followers, 

•‘One blast upon his bugle-horn 
Were worth a thousand men I” 

But while we, who knew and loved him well, thus pour our tears 
upon his fresh grave, let no one imagine that this is a local or an indi¬ 
vidual grief. No! When, at the next assembly of her most distin¬ 
guished sons, our country shall find one place brought into mournful 
prominence by the fatal absence of its illustrious occupant, depsite of 
sectionalism and of party differences, despite of local sentiment, honest 
hearts shall be still found to prompt, and chivalric tongues to utter a 
brave eulogy over their dead brother in arms, sworn to them, and true 
to them in that universal oath of all real knighthood—Fidelity to 
Principle! 

I do not wonder that the people of the pre-historic ages deified many 
of those great men who were cut off in the prime of their powers. If 
we read the obscure lessons of history aright, I do not doubt that the 
demi-gods of antiquity were but the historic memories of great men 
whose mission had been interrupted by death—a catastrophe to which 
the wants and the hopes of their cotemporaries could not be reconciled. 


17 


Could so much power, so much potential goodness die? Would they 
not return again to earth, where so much remained for their accom¬ 
plishment—so much for them to do? Hope awaited their new advent 
until “hope waited against hope,” and finally deified the attribute 
whose return to earth had ceased to be expected. “ They will no more 
contend beside us in our earthly conflicts, but for us with the fates 
above.” 

So when we see the aged Adams expiring in the capitol, we are 
ready to exclaim with him, “ this is the last of life!” So, when the 
great soul of Clay sends up its last aspiration in the legislative city 
where his life had been spent, we ejaculate a reverential “Amen!” So, 
when the wearied spirit of Calhoun, in its intense intellectual activity, 
wears away the last thin film which binds it to corporeal life, we joy¬ 
fully chant at once the “ Requiescat” and the “ Resurgam.” So, when 
the great intellect of Webster, broken-hearted, and with ominous and 
increasing languor, seeks a death-bed in the retreats of his “ Sabine 
farm,” we tune our throats to the “Non omnis moriar" of Horace, and 
the still more sublime “ I still live ” of the Puritan patriot. But when 
one goes forth like Broderick, in the maturity of his manhood, in the 
fulness of his powers, in the ripeness of his intellect, in the perfection 
of his moral discipline, hoping so much himself, and of whom so much 
was hoped—when such a one recognizes the beckoning of the inevita- 
ble messenger from afar, and calmly wraps the drapery ot* the grave 
about him, and lies down forever upon his bloody couch, we are as un¬ 
reconciled as the husband over the grave of his first love; as inconsola¬ 
ble as the mother over the corpse of her first born. With swelling 
hearts and tearful eyes we vainly protest against the irreversible decree, 
and are almost tempted to exclaim: “It cannot, must not, shall not be!” 
But alas, while we thus struggle in the closing coils of a great grief, the 
departing spirit passes onward in its solemn, silent, and majestic tread 
towards the vast caverns of the spirit-land, ever expanding its colossal 
proportions as it recedes, until it is swallowed up by the still more gigan¬ 
tic darkness. And while we still gaze with longing, eager, straining 
eyes, as if the rending veil of night would again reveal his returning 
form, comes to us upon the moaning wind from the great Walhalla of 
the dead—“he will not turn back again, he will return to earth no more!” 

God speed thee, then, true son of the masses, most appreciated when 
forever lost! Brave type of manhood! Bright example of self-reliance 
and self-culture! Noble illustration of free institutions! Firm patriot 
and true man: 0 friend, dearly loved and truly mourned, farewell, 
forever, FAREWELL ! 


■ 

4 


+ 

















DEATH OF HON. D. 0. BRODERICK. 


PROCEEDINGS IN CONGRESS. 

IN SENATE. Monday, February 13, 1860. 

Mr. Haun, of California. Mr. President, in conformity to an established 
practice of the Senate, it becomes my melancholy duty to announ e, 
formally, an event which transpired during the adjournment of Congress ; 
the intelligence of which has been already otherwise received by the 
country, with feelings of deep regret. 

My immediate predecessor on this floor, the late Hon. David C. Brod¬ 
erick, departed this life, in the city of San Francisco, on the 16tli day of 
September last, having fallen in an unfortunate conflict, which was 
engendered by the use of unguarded expressions by the deceased, per¬ 
sonal in their character, towards another distinguished gentleman, who 
occupied a high and honorable position in the State of California, and 
which were inflamed’ by the bitter political contest then just terminated 
in that State. 

David Colberth Broderick, the subject of this announcement, was 
born in this city, in February, 1819, and at the time of his death was but 
little over forty years of age. 

His father, an Irish emigrant, was by occupation a stone-cutter; and, 
though moving in the humbler walks of life, was highly respected and 
esteemed as an industrious artisan and worthy citizen. 

Having, whilst David was yet of tender years, removed to the city of 
New York, he there lived, pursuing his vocation, until the year 1837, 
when he died, leaving his late distinguished son, at the early age of 
eighteen years, charged with the support of his mother and a younger 
brother; these soon followed the elder Broderick to the grave ; and 
David stood alone in the world, without recognizable kindred. With a 
striking expression of profound sadness, he remarked in my presence, 
some years since, which I now call to memory, that he was the last of 
his blood on earth, so far as he knew. Hence arose that haughty gloom 
enshrouding his soul, through after life, he could not eradicate and was 
too proud to hide. 

Having, by diligence and study, surmounted many of the obstacles 
with which poverty and humble fortune had encompassed his path, he 
arose, in the city of New York, from the humble place of an apprenticed 
mechanic, through many years of arduous labor and severe application, 
to a position commanding high public respect and political elevation. 
In 1846, at the age of twenty-seven years, he was brought forward by 
his friends, and nominated for the office of Representative in Congress, 
but we learn was defeated by a division of the vote of his party in the 
district. 

In the year 1849 we find him on the Pacific slope, entering with courage, 
energy and perseverance upon the new field which the then recently dis- 


Note. —The preceding address, pages 1-17, was in print, and largely distributed before the 
annexed proceedings in Congress were had. They are therefore added to the undistributed 
portion of the edition. Thus the predictions of the address have been more than fulfilled, 
and the poor tribute which a single band placed upon the grave of the dead, is obscured by 
the splendid monument which eloquenct, chivalry and patriotism have reared to his memory. 




20 


covered gold regions of California presented to enterprise, at once the 
most lucrative and inspiring to honorable ambition. Upon this new 
theatre of activity and ceaseless toil he soon was known as a man of 
marked notoriety and great influence. 

He arrived in California poor in purse, but rich in energy and self- 
reliance ; then, disdaining the pursuits of ephemeral excitements and 
allurements whioh marked those earlier days, he steadily bent h s strong 
intellect and controlling will to the serious purposes of life. 

His high moral deport cent begat universal respect; in private life he 
bore the character of one of the most exemplary men; his generous 
heart and open hand attracted and attached to him a host of devoted and 
admiring friends, who delighted to honor him with public and private 
confidence. Many of these, his early pioneer companions to California, 
yet remain, who mourn his loss with fraternal, unforgetful sorrow. 

In 1850 he was elected to the Senate of California, and in 1851 was 
chosen President of that body, to fill a vacancy occasioned by the promo¬ 
tion of Lieutenant Governor McDougal to the gubernatorial chair, upon 
the resignation of Governor Burnett. 

In 1852 he was re-elected to the Senate, and served with distinguished 
ability in the various positions there assigned him. 

The distinguishing trait in the late Senator Broderick’s character, was 
his strong, unbending will, and the unity and precision of movement it 
afforded him to carry out his j dgment when formed. 

He had, with legitimate and commendable ambition, kept his eye 
steadily fixed upon a seat in this august body, as the place, of all others, 
deemed by himself and friends the most suitable for the development of 
his talents and statesmanship. In this he was sustained by their successful 
efforts; and in 1857 lie was chosen as a United States Senator from the 
State of California. 

He took his seat upon this floor in March of the succeeding year. His 
official action in the Senate forms a part of the national records; and 
many members now present were participants with him in the manage¬ 
ment of public questions here. Of that record, it is not my purpose now 
to speak ; for how do the angry waves of political controversy subside, 
when we stand by the grave of one who, though once engaged amid the 
fiercest elements, now lies cold in the chamber of death, and pulseless 
forever! 

David C. Broderick was no ordinary man. Against the frowns of 
influence and fortune, he made his way to ease and distinction ; and by 
his life and successes, illustrated the beauty of our American institutions, 
in opening the avenue of elevation equally to all, whether the high or 
humble in origin. 

In his life he was made confident by his application, and to aspire to 
renown were the necessary fruits of his toil; in political conduct he was 
a chief, ruled leaders and ordered his successors ; in his death, he sleeps 
lamented as one of the pioneer self-made, honored sons of California, 
mourned by many, lost to all! 

In the ceremonies of this sad tribute to the memory of your late asso¬ 
ciate, Senators, may I not remark upon the solemn thought which the 
occasion induces, when we realize that “in the midst of life, we are in 
death and that we, too, must soon comply with nature’s sure demand, 
and leave these earthly scenes for that 

“Undiscovered country, from whose bourne 
No traveler returns.” 

May we not earnestly hope, when the present and many future genera¬ 
tions shall have passed away, that our Union will stand against every 
political tempest, transmitting to posterity the blessings of liberty 


21 


inherited from our fathers ? And may we not continue, with due regard, 
to submit to Him whose decrees are final ? 

Mr. President, I offer the following resolutions: 

Resolved unanimously , That the members of the Senate, from a sincere 
desire of showing every mark of respect due to the memory of Hon. 
David C. Broderick, deceased, late a member thereof, will go into mourn¬ 
ing, by wearing crape on the left arm for thirty days* 

Resolved unanimously, That, as an additional mark of respect for the 
memory of Hon. David C. Broderick, deceased, the Senate do now adjourn. 

Ordered , That the Secretary communicate a copy of these resolutions 
to the House of Representatives. 

Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky. I rise, Mr. President, for the purpose 
of seconding the resolutions which have been offered, and will take 
this occasion to make a very few remarks. It seems to me, Mr. Presi¬ 
dent, that it is most becoming to say very little upon such occasions. 
There is a cold sort of solemnity about them, that seems to forbid the use 
of vain words. The language of the grave is brief and severe; and 
within its precincts it does not become us to use the language of flattery 
or eulogy. The world to which our departed colleague has gone is one 
where the flatterers and the flattery alike are no more to be found. That 
belongs to this world, and not to that to which, in some measure, we are 
supposed to address ourselves on such an occasion. 

I knew Senator Broderick. I only met with him in this Hall. I did 
not know him until he came here as a Senator a few years ago. His 
history we have had in brief and beautiful terms expressed by his suc¬ 
cessor this morning. I have nothing to add to that history. He was, 
indeed, as the Senator has said, no ordinary man. David C. Broderick 
was a peculiar and an extraordinary man. All the courses of his life 
mark him as such. He occupied no position in life, high or low, upon 
which he did not leave his deep impression. He made his mark where- 
ever he stood; and no man’s career has been, to the extent of it, more 
decidedly traceable and more decidedly marked than David C. Broderick’s. 
He made his way through all the vicissitudes of this life. He was thrown 
into the midst of the temptations of a great city, without friend or 
monitor. Without friend or monitor, he seems to have preserved, 
according to* all the testimony we have, his integrity amidst temptation ; 
and he made advances against all the disadvantages of life which sur¬ 
rounded him, until we found him at last in this body. 

He was here, as he appeared to me, a man of purposes and convictions. 
He followed them strenuously ; he followed them bravely. His heart was 
not wanting in kindness; and, save when he was in pursuit of those con¬ 
victions and purposes that I have mentioned, he was a kind and concilia¬ 
tory spirit. He possessed the devotion of friends in a most extraordinary 
degree as I learn from those who were much better acquainted with his 
life than I was. Broderick’s friends would do, for any one of his friends, 
all that they would do for Broderick himself. By his own devotion to 
them, it must have been, and by his sympathy with his friends, that he 
commanded and swayed all their feelings, and could control their conduct 
in the most remarkable and ordinary degree. 

In this body, so far as I could j udge, and so far as my testimony may 
go, his conduct seemed to be that of an upright, bold, faithful public 
servant. He was not a polished man ; he was not an educated man ; he 
was sometimes rash and rough in his manner ; but his purposes here, so 
far as I can judge, were honest and upright; and, with a boldness and a 
frankness open as day, he spoke what he thought, and he spoke it like a 
man. He was a man, and we shall not look upon his like again. 


22 


Sir, I allude to the manner of his death only to say that the manner of 
it is to he ascribed rather to the vices of the times and to the vices of 
society than to any particular fault of his. He was a man that could not, 
from his nature, more than he could from the laws of society, refuse to 
meet any such arbitrament as that in which his life was sacrificed. The 
world had presented to him a rough and adverse current to encounter 
from his youth upwards. He was bred in the midst of difficulties. He 
was bred in the midst of the sternest temptations, and the sternest rival- 
ships of this life. He could not turn aside in his course from any peril or 
from any danger. This was not the course of David C. Broderick. 

There was a degree of mystery, too, in regard to him. He was a man 
of whose origin but little was known. He seemed to be the offspring of 
mystery, and it surrounded him in such a way through life as to give a 
sort of dignity to his character. His was a formidable name for every 
antagonist—a mysterious, formidable name ; a stern, haughty, onward 
spirit, yielding to no difficulties, yielding to no dangers, pursuing onward, 
according to his convictions, his purposes, one steadfast course, let it lead 
where it might. It brought him to the Senate, and finally led him to the 
grave. There, sir, let him rest in peace ; and, rough as he was in this 
world, and inexorable as he appeared to some, many and many a tear in 
California will be shed upon that grave. Perhaps there is not a single 
grave in California that will be bedewed with more tears, more sincere, 
earnest tears, than the grave of David C. Broderick. 

Mr. Seward, of New York. Mr. President, the great national event of 
our day, 1 think, is the extension of our empire over the interior of the 
continent, from the border of Missouri to the Pacific ocean. He who shall 
write its history will find materials copious and fruitful of influence upon 
the integrity of the American Union and the destiny of the American 
people. He will altogether fail, however, if he do not succeed in raising 
Houston and Rusk and Broderick to the rank among organizers of our 
States, which the world has assigned to Winthrop and Yilliers, Raleigh 
and Penn, Baltimore and Oglethorpe, as well as in placing Taylor and 
Scott and Worth and Quitman, as generals, by the side of Washington 
and Greene and Marion. 

Impartiality will require him to testify that Broderick, more vigorously 
and resolutely than any of his predecessors, overcame accidents and 
circumstances which opposed his success. Neither birth, nor fortune, 
nor education, nor training, nor patronage, nor association, nor prestige 
of any kind, favored ambition in this case. While yet very young, he 
disappeared, unobserved, from among the excitements of mere municipal 
elections in a great commercial city on this side of the continent, and 
rose as suddenly on the other side, towering and conspicuous among the 
ill-assorted and irregular groups of adventurers from all parts of the 
world, who appeared there, reckless, as it seemed, of all restraint, and 
animated by the one absorbing purpose to become quickly rich by being 
the first to scoop up the golden dust in the beds of the rivers of California. 
As we looked upon these tumultuous assemblages, we asked, how shall 
even peace and life be secured among them ? How and when shall this 
political chaos be reduced into the solid substance of a civil State ? Even 
while we were yet asking these questions, we saw that State rise up before 
us in just proportions, firm, vigorous, strong and free, complete in the 
fullest material and moral sufficiency, and, at t! e same time, loyal and 
faithful to the federal Union. The hand that principally shaped it was 
that of David C. Broderick. 

Sir, when I heard in a foreign land of the death of our late associate, I 
experienced, beside the sentiments of sorrow which I am sure are common 
to us all, a keener sorrow that arose from the reflection that he had fallen 


23 


prematurely, while yet there was need and room for further public service 
to augment his fame. But in this I erred. It is not the amplitude, but 
the greatness of achievements that secures the statesman’s renown. 

The manner of his death gave a severe shock to the moral sensibilities 
of the nation. But I will not dwell on this painful subject, because, if 
he could hear me, he would forbid complaint. He consented, I trust, 
reluctantly; but he nevertheless consented to the combat in which he 
fell. I have never known a man more jealous of his honor, or one who 
could so ill endure to be an object of pity or compassion in misfortune or 
in disappointment. I leave him, therefore, in his early grave, content to 
confine my expressions of grief within the bounds of sorrow for the loss 
of a friend, than whom none more truthful and honest survives; a 
Senator, than whom none more incorruptible ever entered these Halls; and 
a statesman, who, though he fell too soon for a nation’s hopes, yet, like 
Hamilton, left behind him noble monuments well and completely finished. 

Mr. Foster, of Connecticut. Mr. President, my acquaintance with the 
late Senator from California commenced soon after he became a member 
of this body. Without being intimate, my relations with him were 
familiar and friendly from that time to the period of our separation at 
the close of the last Congress. Not distinctly identified in his political 
action here with either of the two political parties into which we are 
divided, it is scarcely to be expected that his course would be likely to 
receive very high commendation. Each party would feel privileged to 
criticise, and perhaps to condemn. In the judgment of a charity, pos¬ 
sibly not too liberal, a man may, in the times on which we are fallen, be 
governed by high principles and correct motives, and yet pursue, politi¬ 
cally, the course which he pursued. In the private and social relations 
of life, he seemed to me to possess many qualities to command respect 
and admiration. 

But it was not to speak of the public or private character of the deceased 
that I rose to address the Senate. My purpose was to make a very few 
plain remarks as to the manner of his death, and to consider what action, 
under the circumstances, it was becoming in this body to take. 

Mr. Broderick, it is well known, received a mortal wound in a duel, 
from the effects of which he soon after died. 

Life taken in a duel, by the common law, is murder. Fighting a duel 
is a criminal offence, I believe, in all the States of the Union, punished in 
different States with different degrees of severity. Very serious disabili¬ 
ties are annexed to the offence in many States. In this District by a law 
of Congress of 1839, the surviving party, and all persons concerned in a 
duel in which either party is slain or mortally wounded, are deemed 
guilty of felony, and are punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary, 
at hard labor, for any term not exceeding ten years. The giving or 
accepting a challenge to fight, or being the bearer of such challenge or 
acceptance, is, by the same act, made a high crime and misdemeanor, 
and is punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary for any term not 
exceeding five years. 

The law of California, to which State the Senator belonged, and within 
which this duel was fought, punishes dueling as a crime. The punish¬ 
ment for dueling where a party kills his antagonist, or infiicts such a 
wound that the party injured dies within one year thereafter, is imprison¬ 
ment in the State prison for any term not exceeding five years ; nor less 
than one year, That dueling is directly contrary to the laws of God, is a 
proposition which will hardly be denied. 

And now, the practical question is, shall we render honors, public, 
senatorial honors, to the memory of a man who loses his life in a duel ? 
For myself, I am not prepared to recognize the “code of honor” as a 


24 


“ higher law ” than the laws of man and the laws of God. I presume to 
pass no judgment on the dead, nor indeed on the living, but when a man 
dies in the direct and willful violation of the known laws of his State, his 
country, and his God, however dear to me he may have been, I can join 
in no public tribute of respect to his memory. It is idle to enact laws, it 
is foolish to expect that they will be obeyed, if those whose last voluntary 
act in life is to violate them, are publicly honored as heroes and martyrs. 
With no disposition to war with the dead, or to give unnecessary pain to 
the living, I must vote against these resolutions. 

Mr. Foot, of Vermont. Mr. President, the honorable Senator from 
Ohio [Mr. Wade] is detained from his seat this morning on account of 
indisposition. He had committed to paper some brief remarks which he 
intended to submit to the Senate upon this occasion, expressive of his 
appreciation of, and as a testimony of his respect to the memory of the 
late Mr. Broderick. In his absence, I have been requested to read these 
remarks, a request with which I very cheerfully comply: 

“Mr. President, though not of the same political party, I cannot suffer 
this occasion to pass without expressing my deep sense of the noble 
qualities and manly character of David C. Broderick. It was my good 
fortune to become well, and I may say intimately acquainted with him, 
soon after he took a seat in this body. He was unassuming in his man¬ 
ners, but frank, outspoken and sincere, despising all intrigue and indi¬ 
rection. He was possessed of an excellent understanding, and a fine 
capacity for business. His love of justice was remarkable. Having once 
settled in his own mind what was right, he was immovable as the hills. 
Neither the threats nor the blandishments of power, nor personal peril 
could move him from his purpose. Being of the people, their rights, 
their interests and their advancement was the polar star of his actions. 
For these he was at all times ready to labor, and, if it need be, to die. 
In short, he was the very soul of honor, without fear and without reproach. 

The loss of such a man, Mr. President, is indeed a public calamity.” 

I have nothing to superadd to this testimonial of respect to the memory 
of Mr. Broderick except the expression of my entire and cordial con¬ 
currence. 

Mr. Toombs, of Georgia. Mr. President, I wish simply to announce my 
entire concurrence with the resolutions proposed by the Senator from 
California. My own acquaintance with Mr. Broderick commenced in this 
body and ended here . 9 It was purely and exclusively of a public character. 
I had not the pleasure of any personal acquaintance with him outside of 
his public capacity in the performance of our relative duties here as 
American Senators. But, sir, there were striking points in his character 
that won my respect, and I may say my admiration. I found him bold, 
honorable, truthful, attached to the interests of his country, “clear in 
his office,” and a man that I considered an honor to the American Senate. 
He was one of the best specimens of self-made Americans; springing 
from the humblest walks of society, by virtue of his strength of character, 
and his native and, in early life, almost uncultivated intellect, he rose to 
be a peer of the proudest in the land, and conducted himself after he 
came to this body in such a manner as to win respect and approbation, 
notwithstanding the many prejudices which had surrounded his advent 
into this body, produced, it may be, by the many and stern partisan 
conflicts which marked his active but troubled career. I trusted him as 
a faithful, an honest, an upright, a fearless Senator. 

I give my full concurrence to these resolutions. I had not intended 
even to say this much but for the dissent which has been manifested to our 
proceedings in honor of his memory. He fell in honorable combat, under 


25 


a code wliich he fully recognized. While I lament his sad fate, I hare no 
word of censure for him or his adversary. I think no man under any 
circumstances can have a more honorable death than to fall in the vindi¬ 
cation of honor. He has gone beyond censure or praise. He has passed 
away from men’s judgment, to the bar of the Judge of all the earth, who 
will do right: 

“ Earth’s highest honors en<l in ‘ here he lies 
And ‘ dust to dust ’ concludes her noblest song.” 


The resolutions were adopted ; and the Senate adjourned. 


HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. Monday, February 13, 18G0. 

The following message was received from the Senate by Asbury Dickins, 
their Secretary: 

In Senate of the United States, 
February 13, 1860. 

Resolved unanimously , That the members of the Senate, from sincere 
desire of showing every mark of respect due to the memory of Hon. 
David C. Broderick, deceased, late a member thereof, will go into mourn¬ 
ing, by wearing crape on the left arm for thirty days. 

Resolved unanimously , That, as an additional mark of respect for the 
memory of Hon. David C. Broderick, deceased, the Senate do now adjourn. 

Mr. Burch, of California. Mr. Speaker, the message from the Senate 
just read announces to this body the death of Hon. David C. Broderick, 
late Senator from the State which I have the honor in part to represent 
upon this floor. 

During the lifetime of Mr. Broderick I did not bear with him the 
relation of personal intimacy, nor even that of political friendship. 
Therefore, sir, in the remarks I deem it my duty to make on this occasion, 
it is not my purpose to attempt an eulogy of his virtues ; I shall leave 
the more appropriate performance of that last sad mark of respect to his 
memory to others here, who knew him better than I did. That, however, 
which I believe he, in the exercise of Christian charity, would have done 
for me in a transposition of circumstances, I now do for his memory. 

Mr. Broderick, I understand, was born in this city of Washington, in 
the year 1820, while his father was engaged as an artisan on the Capitol 
building. Here was passed his infancy; and since “first impressions 
are the most lasting,” who shall say it may not have been while sporting 
under the shadow of this building, that his youthful breast was first 
inspired with that ambition, laudable in every American citizen, to serve 
his country in the most august of her tribunals, the Senate, which he 
lived to consummate ? 

At an early age his parents removed with him to the city of New York, 
where he passed his youth and early manhood. It was in that city he 
acquired that knowledge of his fellow-men and cultivated and pursued 
that taste for politics which so eminently characterized his after life. 

In 1849 he emigrated to the newly discovered “El Dorado” of the 
Pacific; and on the admission of California into the Union, he engaged 
actively in the politics of that State, and was repeatedly honored by his 
fellow-citizens at the ballot-box, occupying, by their suffrages, the posi¬ 
tions of Senator and acting Lieutenant Governor. 

In the winter of 1857 he was elected to a seat in the Senate of the 
United States. Having served one Congress, he returned to the State of 


26 


liis adoption, and died at the city of San Francisco, the place of his 
residence, on the 16th September, 1859. 

No one possessed a more determined will, or greater energy of character 
in the execution of his objects, than did Mr. Broderick. These two 
characteristics are intimately associated and connected with his whole 
life. And, sir, since he, unaided by the advantages of a superior educa¬ 
tion, without influential family or friends, before reaching the meridian 
of life, rose from an humble position to one second only to the Presidency, 
should not his achievements be an incentive to all, whatever their rank 
in the beginning of life’s battle may be, to strive through adverse circum¬ 
stances for the high places in our republican Government ? At the time 
of his death, Mr. Broderick was but thirty-nine years of age. His life, 
then, was short; but his career was marked throughout with extraordi¬ 
nary incidents. He is now gone. The good which men do live after 
them. Their errors and frailties, if any they have, certainly die with 
them ; and I hope that all animosities which existed during his life are 
now buried with him. 

His memory, I know, will long be cherished by many of my constitu¬ 
ents, who have towards him a devotion and an attachment peculiar to his 
friends alone ; and were there nothing else in the character of this extra¬ 
ordinary man to inspire admiration, the power to enchain to his fortunes 
and himself those with whom he associated, will ever remain a peculiar 
characteristic of Mr. Broderick, and attract the attention of all who may 
hereafter become acquainted with his life-history. 

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, as a further mark of respect to the memory 
of the deceased, I offer the following resolutions, with the hope that they 
may be unanimously adopted: 

Resolved , That this House has heard, with deep sensibility, the 
announcement of the death of Hon. David C. Broderick, late a Senator 
in Congress from the State of California. 

Resolved , That as a testimony of respect for the memory of the deceased, 
the members and officers of this House will wear the usual badge of 
mourning for thirty days. 

Resolved , That, as a further token of respect for the deceased, the House 
do now adjourn. 

Mr. Haskix, of New York. Mr. Speaker, in rising to second the reso¬ 
lutions just offered, I feel somewhat diffident, lest I should not be able to 
do the character of the distinguished Senator, in honor of whose memory 
they have been proposed, that justice which its simplicity, its purity, its 
integrity, and its greatness demands. As it is the duty of eulogy not to 
indulge in extended panegyric, I will, in the few remarks which I intend 
to make on this occasion, confine myself to the prominent facts and cir¬ 
cumstances connected with the eventful and romantic history of my 
deceased friend. I will not make a funeral pageant of my grief; but will 
give a simple narrative of his career, believing it to be a glorious prece¬ 
dent for the honorable imitation of the poor and the humble, who have 
energy and wealth of intellect to command. 

No gentleman upon this floor, or in the other Chamber, knew the 
deceased Senator better or more intimately than myself. We were school¬ 
boys together, grew up to manhood and entered the gate and pathway of 
life hand in hand. In early youth we both attended one of those great 
“ people’s colleges ” of the North—a free school—for about a year each. 
This was the only academic education he ever received, and it awakened 
within him an appetite for useful knowledge which he lost no opportunity 
afterwards to gratify. Upon the death of his widowed mother, whose 
sole support he had been for years, he left the trade he had been follow- 


27 


ing (that of a stone-cutter', which was undermining his constitution, and. 
commenced another branch of business less laborious and more lucrative, 
by which he maintained himself and a younger brother, who had been 
left a charge upon him. Among his first acts after this change was the 
purchase of a library ; and I well recollect that in 1845-46, when in the 
habit of visiting him, I frequently found him engaged in study, perfecting 
his knowledge of grammar by writing in full parsing lessons from the 
text-books. About this time the deceased became the foreman of one of 
the largest and most respectable fire companies of New\York, (Howard 
company, No. 34.) 

In that city this position is regarded as one requiring great intrepidity 
and power to command ; and his election to it, out of one hundred young 
men who had grown up with him, is sufficient evidence of the fact, were 
evidence wanting, that he possessed these distinguishing traits of char¬ 
acter. I allude to the fact to show that thus early his ability as a 
leader was recognized and appreciated ; and that, too, by a class of men 
whose actions in periling their lives, without hope of reward, for the pre¬ 
servation of public and private property, and the safety of society, might 
be studied with advantage by the statesmen of the present day. I knew 
Mr. Broderick intimately, at that time, and heard him declare that he 
would rather wear the foreman’s cap of his company in the discharge of 
a fireman’s duty than be crowned with a kingly diadem. 

The gentleman from California has given to the House so close a narra¬ 
tive of the political career of the lamented Senator in his adopted State, 
that it would not become me to travel over that ground again. I shall, 
therefore, confine myself to a brief description of his life previous to his 
leaving my State. We entered the busy arena of politics at the same 
time, both as national, conservative Democrats ; sincere believers in, and 
followers of, the pure principles of the Democratic party, as laid down in 
its platforms, and exemplified in the administrations of Jefferson, Madi¬ 
son and Jackson. We were together members of the Democratic general 
committee, which had control of the party organization in the city of New 
York. It was there that he first displayed his great energy of character 
and tact as a local party leader. He controlled the Democratic organiza¬ 
tion in his congressional district, and so potential was he, that he at times 
governed the nominations of the party for the chief magistracy of the 
city, and other important local offices. His indomitable will was felt in 
nearly all of the Democratic conventions held in that great city during 
the time he remained a resident of it; and as a political leader of pow¬ 
erful influence, he won the admiration of his friends, and the respect of 
his opponents. It was then— 

“ I saw him beat the surges under him, 

And ride upon their backs : he trod the water 
Whose enmity he flung aside and breasted 
The surge most swoln that met him ; his bold head 
’Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oared 
Himself, with his good arms, in lusty stroke 
To the shore.” 

The only legislative position which he ever held in the city of New 
York was as a member of the Charter Convention, called to amend and 
remodel its organic law, and he there was untiring in his efforts to re¬ 
form the abuses which existed in the city government. To show the 
strong tendency of his mind to latitudinous Democracy, he advocated and 
succeeded in securing to the people the right to elect the heads of the 
various city executive departments. In 1846, he was nominated by the 
Democratic party of the fifth district of New York, in which he and 
myself then resided, for Congress, and was defeated by Frederick A. Tall- 
madge, a gentleman who had been a State Senator, and had previously 

2 


28 


occupied several positions of honor in that State. This defeat in a district 
which had before usually been in the habit of sending a Democrat to 
Congress, was believed by many to have been caused by his humble 
origin and fire company associations. Being the son of an artisan, and 
an artisan himself, the aristocracy of the party turned their backs upon 
him, whilst many mechanics and workingmen, jealous of the success of 
this then young tribune of the people, assisted in what they considered 
the overthrow of his political fortune. This rebuke deeply wounded his 
pride, for he was proud, at times, even to imperiousness, and he showed 
that he never forgot the hand that administered unjust rebuke. In his 
celebrated speech in the Senate against the admission of Kansas under the 
Lecompton constitution, he took occasion to upbraid the working-men for 
not being true to their own class. I will read the extract to which I 
allude: 

‘ ‘ I have not the admiration for the men of the class from whence I 
sprang that might be expected ; they submit too tamely to oppression, 
and are too prone to neglect their rights and duties as citizens. But, sir, 
the class of society to whose toil I was born under our form of government 
will control the destinies of this nation. If I were inclined to forget my 
connection with them, or to deny that I sprang from them, this Chamber 
would not be the place in which I could do either. While I hold a seat 
here I have but to look at the beautiful capitals adorning the pilasters 
that support this roof to be reminded of my father’s talent, and to see his 
handiwork. I left the scenes of my youth and manhood for the “Far 
West,” because I was tired of the struggles and jealousies of men of my 
class, who could not understand why one of their fellows should seek to 
elevate his condition above the common level.” 

At about this time, the existence of gold in large quantities in California 
having become “a fixed fact,” he determined to leave New York, where 
his canvass had somewhat impoverished him, to retrieve himself, and to 
carve out a name and achieve honorable fame on the shores of the Pacific. 
This design was carried out in 1849, and I well remember his last words 
of parting, to me and other friends, in which he assured us that he would 
never return to the city in which he had spent his early life and in which 
his honorable ambition had received so severe a check, until he came 
clothed with the sovereignty of California, then a State in embryo, as one 
of its Senators. I was to have gone with him as his companion and friend, 
and was only prevented from so doing by family ties and family importu¬ 
nities. But I lived to see his prediction realized, and we met again, here 
in this Capitol, in 1857, at the commencement of this Administration ; he 
the representative in the United States Senate of a sovereign State he had 
assisted to bring into existence, and myself the Bepresentative of the 
people of my district in this popular branch of Congress. 

The preferment and exalted position he attained should gladden the 
heart of every artisan throughout the land. The blacksmith may now 
look up from his anvil, the stone-cutter from his uneven block, and with 
“excelsior” aspiration say to each other, “be of good cheer, for even we, 
emulating Broderick’s example, may fill seats in a body adorned by a 
Clay, a Calhoun, and a Webster!” 

Of Mr. Broderick I may with truth and justice say, that for energy of 
purpose, integrity of character, and fidelity to friends and to friendships, 
he had no superior that I have ever known. He was not an orator in the 
popular acceptation or the word ; but he was a bold, truthful, outspoken 
man, dealing in facts with a just and discriminating mind. His powers of 
reasoning were by no means great; he arriv d at conclusions with the 
rapidity of thought, as if by intuition, and his conclusions were always 
immovably right. He had no model among the great men of the country 


29 


to follow ; but if there ever was a Senator of the United States who united, 
in his person and in his caracter, more of the prominent traits of the 
statesman and hero, Andrew Jackson, than those of any other, it was 
David C. Broderick. His power in the Senate was acknowledged and 
felt by all his associates, although he had been among them but for a short 
period of time. In some, this power excited wonder, whilst others were 
magnanimous enough to admit it. There was a loadstone of truth about 
the young Senator, and a frankness and honesty of heart in the man, 
which passed like an electric current from him to them, and made them 
anxious, with a few exceptions, to assist and serve him. No one destitute 
of patronage ever had more devoted and unselfish friends, and no one 
ever retained such friends or their friendship longer. He lived for fame. 
He had no ties of blood-relationship to bind him to earth, the last being 
severed by the death of his brother Richard, in 1847, who was killed in 
Charlton street New York, by the accidental bursting of a bombshell. 

Alone in the world, surrounded by none of those tender associations of 
family which develop the affectionate part of man’s nature, make home 
happy, and life in this world agreeable, he consecrated himself to the 
attainment of that political distinction which he finally achieved. I will 
not refer to the unfortunate affair which was the immediate cause of his 
“ taki g off,” in language of harsh invective, because of the sectional 
dividing li e which exists between northern law and civilization and 
southern custom and “chivalry,” in relation to the duello. My friend 
believed in the “field of honor”—mistakenly so called, in my judgment— 
and sacrificed a life upon it that belonged to his State and his country. 
I will not here impugn his memory for this. 

“This is the state of man; to-day he puts forth 
The tender leaves of hope, to morrow blossoms. 

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him; 

The third day c >mes a frost, a killing frost; 

And, wheu tie thinks, good, easy man, full surely 
His greatness is a ripening, nips his root, 

And then he falls, as I do.” 

_ Alas ! alas! he died in the prime of manhood, at a time when his 
country could least afford to lose the services of one who would have 
conferred lasting benefits upon it. The devotion with which he Watched 
the growth and promoted the greatness of California, make his death an 
individua calamity to every inhabitant of that State. Cut down, as he 
was, in a day, the whole nation united with California in mourning a blow 
which deprived it of the counsels of a pure, unselfish patriot. When the 
tidings of his fall reached the Atlantic States, the heart of every honest 
man throbbed in agony at his loss. 

He sleeps his last sleep at the base of the Lone mountain, in the State 
of which he was among the first, the most useful, and the bravest of its 
pioneers. We all now deplore his loss, though tears are of no further use 
when once the tribute of nature has been paid. The business of life 
summons us away from grief and calls us to the exercise of those virtues 
of which we are lamenting the deprivation, and for which he was distin¬ 
guished. We can now only preserve the memory of his life, which we 
believe was useful, honorable, and brave ; yet surely, Mr. Speaker, there 
is something pleasing in the reflection that our separation from those we 
love, and whose memories we cherish, is merely corporeal. With a sad 
spirit, and with grief upon my heart, I second the resolutions of con¬ 
dolence and respect to the memory of my deceased friend, proposed by 
the gentleman from California. 

Mr. Hickman, of Pennsylvania, Mr. Speaker, “The question of his 
death is enrolled in the Capitol;” and I speak the truth in eulogy. I 
could not do otherwise without wronging the character of the illustrious 


30 


dead, who was a bondman to the truth. Born of the humble, David C. 
Broderick died a peer of the proudest and the best. His commanding life 
challenged respect, and its surrender sanctfied it. Dead, he still lives, and 
will live. Absent from those who knew him best and valued him most, he 
will continue to be present with them. In every conflict for principle, in 
every struggle for the discharge of patriotic duty, he will whisper to the 
doubting, and hold up the right arm of the resolute. 

In stilly thought, and in the wildering fight, 

A cloud by day, a pillar’d flame by night, 

He’ll point us onward, onward to the goal, 

Leading on legions with his vast control— 

Implanting truth, the idol of his soul. 

Since we last met here, yonder Chamber of your Capitol has lost a sage’s 
intellect, a hero’s heart, a devotee of country. David C. Broderick has 
ceased to walk the earth, and sleeps his last sleep in the Golden City of 
the West. Mighty States, extending from the Pacific to the furthest East, 
was startled and almost paralyzed at the recital of the sad story; and their 
sturdy yeomanry, their skilled in craft, their sons, breathed their vow in 
tears, and registered it in faith and determination. Their banners are 
already in their hands, let the nation read them. They bear the last 
words of a dying seer—they may yet be trumpeted at the mouths of cannon 
on fields of war. 

Hereafter, in the vast hereafter, children will speak his name when 
tracing their father’s creed; and here, homage, impulsive, not ceremonial, 
shall be presented to him, as officers of the state and army rendered it 
before the corse of the great Constantine. 

Forty years ago, whilst the center portions of this building were rising 
from the ashes of wicked conflagration, within sight of this spot a child 
was born to a lowly artisan. How little did that father imagine that the 
columns upon which he then wrought were to support a dome, beneath 
which that son should sit as Senator from a State not then known to the 
Confederacy, and bearing within its bosom treasure more valuable than 
the coffers of the world. And yet, in the volume of Omniscience it was 
written out how David C. Broderick, the child of toil, should live and 
die; what noble aspirations, what self-sacrificing devotion, what uncon¬ 
querable will, would achieve; how he would suffer immolation at the call 
of conscience; and his example should become an inspiration to millions 
of men, from whose ranks he rose like a giant from slumber. He was 
God’s instrument for mighty purposes, and He gave him love, and com¬ 
prehension, and power. He was a philanthropist, a philosopher, a chief. 
Those who thought him less never knew him, and must fail to comprehend 
the cause and extent of that feeling which his death has produced. It will 
be better understood hereafter. When the heavens clothe themselves in 
mourning, they hold the hot thunderbolt as well as the gentle rain. None 
are too wise to learn. Mistakes may be made by defying the one whilst 
petitioning for the other. 

I esteem it my highest honor to have enjoyed fully the affection and 
confidence of the departed statesman ; and clustering memories, as well as 
a request made and a pledge given, when the lion was in the pride of his 
strength, and snuffed his danger in the distance, demand that I should 
speak of him as I knew him. My estimate of Mr. Broderick’s character is 
not made up from the wild excitement of party conflict, or the deeper 
feeling of parliamentary contests. It is drawn from a more truthful 
source—from the calm and meditation of the midnight hour. Undiscip¬ 
lined by early education, and making no pretense of learnirg, he was 
thoroughly acquainted with the history of his race; and had carefully and 
critically read the best models in English literature. Mankind was his 
study. He had a quick preception of ruling motives, and his charity was 


31 


great. Without a tie of blood to bind him in selfishness to the world, the 
glory of his country and the happiness of her people gave direction to all 
his thoughts and moulded all his plans; singularly modest in his bearing, 
and diffident in the expression of his opinions, he was entirely self-reliant, 
and possessed a courage devoid of fear. His consecration to the interests 
of the farri er, the mechanic, and the laborer, was complete. Their loss 
is irreparable, and I would bid them know it. With the impassioned 
utterances of a cotemporaneous poet, I would turn their grief to action—■ 

“ Arouse from your lethargy, children of toil, 

Ye sons of the anvil, the loom and the soil; 

Come forth as the winds, in their struggling might, 

And wrestle ’till death with the foeman of Right. 

“ ’Twas thus with your leader, the gifted and true; 

His life was a sacrifice, given for you; 

Every pulse of his heart, every nerve of his frame, 

Was to dignify Labor and give it to Fame.” 

I need not say I loved him—yea, with more than a brother’s love; I 
shall never forget him; no, neither in calm or storm. I would embody 
his spirit, if I could, in an undying frame, that the friendless and 
oppressed might look forward in unfailing hope. 

But, alas ! in anguish I repeat it, Broderick —there was but one—has 
ceased to walk the earth. I may not allude even to the circumstances of 
the hero’s fall; and I have no disposition to do so. I believe, I feel, I 
know ! that is enough of consolation. God called, he answered, and took 
his cause with him. In the hands of just Omnipotence I leave him and it. He 
has left his mantle—too large for ordinary mortals ; who that still breathes 
is daring enough to place it on his shoulders ? 

He was just and generous ; he was gifted and noble ; he was pure and 
patriotic. He raised poverty to rank, proving the legitimacy of its blood; 
and his fame will be as enduring as the records of public virtue. 

Mr. Stout, of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, I trust it will not be deemed inap¬ 
propriate for me to occupy the attention of the House for a few moments 
on this occasion. I had the honor of personal acquaintance with the 
deceased Senator whose death has been announced. It is true, that it was 
more limited than that of those who were associated with him as his 
personal and political friends; but, having for years been a resident of that 
State, and a portion of the time connected with its political affairs, I had 
a favorable opportunity of judging of the merits of the man whose death 
we now deplore. My respect for the man, and for the feeling of a large 
portion of my constituents, prompts me to say a word concerning the 
lamented Broderick. I have not yet forgotten the gloom that rested upon 
the countenances of my constituents as they received the news that 
David C. Broderick was no more. We all felt that the Pacific coast had 
lost a friend. However much we may have differed with him in his po¬ 
litical course, we did not lose sight of the fact that he was a friend to our 
interests. The people of my adopted State whom I now have the honor to 
represent, just emerging as they were from territorial vassalage, felt that 
they could look to him, with the rest of the Colifornia delegation, as a 
defender of their rights and interests; and when the sad intelligence of 
his death was received, it spread a gloom over our entire State. This 
sympathy was not controlled by political prejudices, as I trust mine is not 
on this occasion. They knew something of the man. They knew how he 
had arisen from an humble position to that of the highest in the councils 
of the nation. They all knew, or had heard, of his courage and unim¬ 
peachable integrity. They knew of his devotion to his friends, and they 
respected him for these qualities. 

I think, Mr. Speaker, that it may be safely said that no man ever lived 


82 


who more unfailingly kept every promise than Mr. Broderick. In all my 
knowledge of the man, I never knew one to become liis friend who after¬ 
ward abandoned him; nor did I ever know one to complain of broken 
promises on his part. To these qualities I attribute much of the success 
that attended him. In prosperity he was not unduly elated, and in 
adversity he was never discouraged. The one led him to prudence and 
forbearance ; the other, to renewed energy and perseverance. 

But Broderick is dead! What we may say, nor the grief of his friends, 
will call him back to life. The dark messenger of Death has put a period 
to all his bright anticipations, and has deprived his admiring friends of 
their beloved companion, and forever blotted out the fond hopes they 
entertained for his future usefulness. 

I will not attempt on this occasion to recount the disadvantages he en¬ 
countered in arriving at the high position he occupied at the time of his 
death. His history in that respect has been written. All know that he 
was among those who arose from poverty without the aid of wealthy or 
influential friends to that high station he occupied at the time of his death, 
and though dead, his example still lives as an encouragement to those 
who, in humble circumstances, aspire to places of honor and trust among 
their fellow-men. His case furnishes a fitting illustration of what a young 
man may do in a country like ours, extending to him almost any position 
to which he may aspire, when that desire is seconded by an energy com¬ 
mensurate to the positi n which he desires to attain. Let the grave cover 
whatever we may be disposed to consider an error on his part, and may 
the example he has furnished us of industry and perseverance, be the 
means of stimulating others to laudable exertions for fame and position in 
this our free and happy country. 

Mr. Burlingame, of Massachusetts. I rise, Mr. Speaker, to mingle my 
sorrow with this general expression of grief at the fall of one so gifted and 
so brave as was David C. Buoderick. It is true, that I did not know 
him so long nor so well as did those gentlemen who have just now spoken 
so feelingly and so justly of him were quite intimate, and I presume it 
was a knowledge of this fact which led those who were near and dear to 
him when he lived, to request that I would join with them in these last 
sad tributes to his memory. 

And now, sir, standing by his closed grave, I will do what I can to lead 
your mind, Mr. Speaker, and the mind of the House, far away from the 
causes which led him in this bloody shroud, and call your attention to a 
few of those singular qualities which made him the marvel alike of his 
friends and his foes. I do not shrink, sir, from a defense of the motives 
and actions of Mr. Broderick ; but this is not the occasion, this is not the 
time for resentment; it is the hour sacred to friendship and to grief. In 
this spirit, sir, I shall offer the few words I have to say. 

He was the child of the people ; born to that great American heritage, 
the right to labor and to enjoy the fruits thereof, he shed a new dignity, 
on the toil of man. It is true, as the gentleman from New York [Mr. Haskin | 
remarked, that now, worn and tired labor may look up from its toil and 
be proud. Sir, that was a beautiful incident to which he made reference 
when in the Senate of the United States, representing, in part, an empire 
in the West, Mr. Broderick permitted the recollections of his early 
struggles to come upon him, and pointed out with pride, the handiw rk 
of his honored father, as it appeared in the traceries of the Capitol above 
his head. It was a recognition of his alliance with the great working 
classes of the country. But it was nobler far, manlier far, on that occasion 
when instead of flattering the prejudices of his people, he told them with 
a fearless tongue their faults, rebuked their prejudices, and yet leaned 
confidingly on their virtues while he vindicated their rights. 


83 


Sir, lie was a Democrat without being a demagogue ; he loved the 
people and he never betrayed them, and with passing time, as they dis¬ 
covered these traits in his character, he won their enduring regard. 

Sir. I never knew a man who was so misunderstood—who differed so 
much from his common fame. I myself sought him in this city as the 
Representative of a hardy but tumultuous portion of my countrymen. 
Imagine, sir, my surprise when I found him a student—a student of 
history, a student of poetry, a silent man, one who sat apart from his 
fellows, pondering deeply the great problems of life ; one instructed, as 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Hickman] has informed us, in 
those motives which underlie all the actions of men. I found him firm 
and dignified in deportment. It is true his struggles with adverse fortune 
had clouded his brow, and that his face, in the presence of his foes, ever 
wore a mingled look of scorn and defiance, but for his friends he had a 
genial smile—an irresistibly fascination. His look was honest and sincere, 
his voice firm and truthful, and sometimes it had a manly melody which 
caused it to penetrate into the deepest recesses of the human heart. 

Sir, he was a born leader. Sitting in his silent, solitary room in San 
Francisco, his wizard mind went forth over the hills and through the 
valleys of California, until the whole State was filled with the breath of 
his power. He had an indomitable will. Before it party names and 
party organizations dissappeared, and men, under the spell of his great 
spirit, forgot they were Republicans, forgot they were Democrats, and 
only remembered with pride that they were Broderick men. Few men 
with power to draw the masses to themselves, to cause their multiform 
feelings to flow in the individual channel of a single will, have appeared 
at any time. Few have appeared in this country. He, sir, had that 
gift. He had— 


“-The Mystery of commanding 

The God like power, the art Napoleon 
Of winning, binding, wielding, banding 
The hearts of millions till they move as one.” 

I sav that this quality is rare. Men with it have appeared at long 
intervals upon the shores of time ; but when they have appeared, they 
have been the idols of their race. 

Mr. Broderick fell in the very dawn of his career. Though he fell thus 
early, yet he had stamped the impress of his mighty mind upon the affairs 
of the Pacific slope. No wiser brooded over the chaos there. He aided 
in lay ng the foundations of the new State. He aided in rearing its fabric 
of government; and he did all he could; sir, to fill it with the pure soul 
of the people. He believed in something. He believed that he had a 
mission to perform. He believed that he was a champion of the people. 
Their wrongs were his wrongs ; their rights were his rights. His heart 
throbbed responsive to theirs, and their wild and stormy passions rolled 
ever through his soul. Following this line of duty, he fell into conflict 
instantly with those tyrannic elements which, in every society, are seeking 
to destroy the rights of the people. 

Loving the people, jealous of their rights, he fought those elements with 
fierceness and with bitterness. No man knew better than he did the re¬ 
quirements of his times. No man knew better than he did the logic of 
events. No man knew better than he did the hazard a man takes to him¬ 
self who is really, earnestly, faithfully for the people. He, sir, had read 
history, and knew what had been the fate of the Roman Gracchi ; but 
no personal consequences to himself deterred him. Standing in that 
presence, scornful of corruption and of tyranny, in the majesty and 
grandeur of his pure, stainless private and public life, looking to his 
stormy past, looking into the dark future, he saw, with the clear eye of 


34 


his judgment, the very point where he must abdicate the leadership for 
the people’s rights, or yield up his life. Sir, he did not hesitate one 
moment. Many a man here will remember how the shadow of the event 
which is to cloth us in mourning this day was upon him ere he left this 
city. He bade farewell to his friends forever. 

He had, as I saw stated to-day, selected—and the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Hickman] himself has attested the fact here to-day— 
the very man who was to speak for him upon this floor; and one, speaking 
of him, with transcendent ability, describes his departure from his loved 
city of New York ; how, when he saw one dear object after another sink 
beneath the waves—the spire of the church, the palace, the hovel a 
gloom came over him which his friends could not lift from his heart. He 
saw a hand they did not see, waving him perpetually toward the shadow- 
land. He followed it with steady tread and fearless eye. He is gone ; 
and I will not penetrate that shadow-land. Hp stands in the presence of 
the great Master of events, who will judge fairly between him and those 
who sent him there. 

His body sleeps, as has been said, by a lone mountain, behind the city 
of his adoption. He has no kith nor kin who will go there to water that 
lone grave with their tears; but the people who laid him down to his 
last resting place with their tears and their sobs—the people for whom 
he lived and for whom he died—as long as the seasons shall come and go, 
as long as the great ocean of the west shall ebb and flow through the 
Golden Gates, will cherish and love the memory of David C. Broderick. 

Mr. Morris, of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, we are told that California’s 
great Senator is dead! If it were not so, every breeze that comes to us 
from the Pacific bears upon its wings the sad tidings of this great woe. 
Although I am the last, yet I am not a less sincere mourner at his closing 
funeral rites. Selected by his friends to speak on this occasion, I come 
to pay to his memory the tribute of a sincere and heartfelt sorrow for his 
loss. I bring with me, sir, a knowledge of his personal character and 
public worth, arising from an acquaintance which, I am happy to know, 
ripened into a sincere friendship. During the last session of Congress I 
occupied a seat at the same table with him. His chair was directly oppo¬ 
site mine. Our intercourse was free and familiar, and afforded me oppor¬ 
tunities of studying his character; and I shall speak of it, therefore, 
briefly, as I knew it. Others have given the details of his short but 
eventful life. 

At the commencement of the present session, I returned to my accus¬ 
tomed place at the same table; but, upon looking around it, I did not see 
Broderick there! All the incidents of his melancholy death rushed 
across my mind, and I was led to reflect what security for reputation and 
life has a conscientious and fearless public man like him. The boldness 
of honesty and truth is too often the gateway to detraction and death; 
while the artful and wily politician a d dissembler, by the tricks of his 
art, passes on upon the highroad of power and fame to bask in their 
sunshine. 

It is too often the case with those who rebuke authority, denounce cor¬ 
ruption, and vindicate public morality and justice, that a hard fate awaits 
them. David C. Broderick, the Irish stone-mason’s boy, who toiled at 
his father’s trade, and raised himself to eminence by his own great 
energy and talents, early, and alas! sadly, realized this bitter truth, and 
now sleeps the sleep that knows no waking. The funeral cortege that 
followed his remains to the grave is dispersed. Another now fills his 
senatorial seat. No wife, no child, no relative survives him. Who is 
there, then to weep for him ? Who is there that will bring incense to 
sprinkle upon his memory ? There runs not a drop of his blood in any 


85 


human veins. His once noble form is wrapped in a bloody shroud ; his 
manly voice is hushed in death ; his flashing eye has withered in its 
socket: and he who but yesterday shone in the National Senate Chamber, 
a star of the first magnitude, and moved among his peers, possessing a 
vigorous physical frame, f ree from disease, is now food for worms. Why, 
oh ! why, Mr. Speaker, all this ? What had he done, that he should pay 
the penalty of his life ? Why was his once bosom friend, who had no 
just cause of quarrel with him, his executioner? 

When I contemplate the proper answers to these questions, the heart 
grows sick, the mind reels upon its throne, and I find no consolation ex¬ 
cept that “He who doeth all things well,” and “whose ways are not man’s 
ways, and are past finding out,” hath in them an inscrutable providence. 
Julius Caesar fell beneath twenty-three bleeding and gaping wounds ; but 
it was the stab of Brutus that was the unkindest of them all. But though 
Caesar entered Rome as a victorious general, in violation of law, the con¬ 
spirators who struck him down gained nothing by his death. Justice 
sometimes comes with a slow and muffled step, but as inevitably as 
destiny itself, and it overtook each one of them sooner or later. It starts 
the guilty in their midnight dreams, haunts them in the arid desert, 
clings to them in the halls of revelry, and whithersoever they go, there 
it is whispering to an uneasy and violated conscience. 

I pretend not to say that the death of David C. Broderick was the 
result of foul play; but many think, if he had been less honest and 
independent, he would to-day, be a living man ? What was his offence ? 
What had he done that he should fall by the hand of violence ? Why 
was he hunted from place to place without just cause or provocation? 
On truth’s historic page will be recorded the response to these questions ; 
and the people of California will read and understand them. He had 
wronged no man ; he had sought to quarrel with none ; but, as far as he 
believed duty and honor would allow, avoided personal difficulties, yet 
they were thurst upon him and he seemed a doomed man. It is true, 
that born of poor but honest parentage, and toiling with his hands for 
his daily bread, a child of obscurity, and buffeted by misfortune’s waves, 
he had looked up from his lonely and solitary condition to “fame’s dread 
mount,” whereon stood the rich, the proud, and great, and dared to enter 
the list of honorable competition for honorable fame. 

Settling in a State, possessing a heterogeneous population; poor, with¬ 
out friends; scoffed at and derided; he started out in a direct line for the 
goal of his ambition, while those who were his rivals, and had gone to 
their new location invested with the charms of acknowledged talent and 
fame, were startled and alarmed that one in whose veins ran only plebian 
blood should be so bold and presumptuous as to jostle them from ambi¬ 
tion’s ladder. Nothing daunted by opposition, however, and relying 
upon the energies of his own great soul, his course was upward and 
onward, like the eagle’s flight, and in a few short years he was the 
acknowledged head and leader of his State, while his most powerful foe 
was prostrate at his feet, asking his aid, and found him as magnanimous 
as he was brave. Perhaps no man ever overcame so many obstacles in 
so short a time. Without the possession of more than ordinary mental 
faculties, he never could have done it. 

He was, indeed, an extraordinary man. His intellect was cast in a 
capacious mould; his energy knew no tiring; and he was a moral hero 
that stood for the right. He sacrificed no principle to expediency, 
acknowledged no leader but duty, and alike scorned the smiles and cor¬ 
ruptions of power. His allegiance he owed to the people and their rights, 
and he refused it to Presidents and Cabinets, when desired for base pur¬ 
poses. Always open and staightforward, there was no dissimulation or 
guile in him. His language was the open, plain Anglo-Saxon language 

3 


36 


of frankness and truth, and he called things by their right names. A 
truer man, a more disinterested patriot, a firmer hater of wrong and 
oppression, a more devoted and constant friend, and purer public 
servant, never lived. No suspicion was ever even whispered that cor¬ 
ruption had tampered with him, that bribery’s base coin had adhered to 
his fingers, or that he was in any way implicated in schemes of public 
plunder. Temperate, moral, simple, and frugal in his habits, and 
addicted to no vices, with all his aims his country’s good, he trod life’s 
path not as society’s spawn, but as one of nature’s noblemen, looking 
down from his lofty eminence upon his traducers, and moving forward as 
a comet amid lesser planets, shedding a radiance in his pathway. He 
knew no obligations but such as duty imposed, and those he faithfully 
discharged. Direct, bold, faithful, and single in his purpose, he never 
hesitated, never wavered, never faltered, when right and wrong were 
presented to him, which to choose. His was no weak, doubting, cowardly 
tongue, that was afraid to give utterance to truth. 

As a statesman, he had not the polish of those educated in the schools 
—not their plausibility or flowery language ; but possessed a native vigor 
of intellect, expanded by reflection and reading, which marked every 
effort of his forensic power. Who that heard him, or who that has read 
his remarks, will ever forget his manly and eloquent reply to South 
Carolina’s proud and gifted Senator, who reflected on the laboring men 
of the North in unjust terms ? It is, Mr. Speaker, no disparagement to 
others, to say, that no Senator ever gained, in so short a time, so wide¬ 
spread a fame. Coming to this Capitol with the breath of slander preced¬ 
ing him and breathing dishonor upon his character, in two short years his 
State reputation was swallowed up by a national one, and his name 
became a familiar household word throughout this vast Republic. It 
will go on, sir, culminating, until truth and justice shall place it in the 
highest niche of fame. 

Though he was born in this District, and spent his juvenile years 
around this Temple of American Liberty, he was the true type of a 
northern Democrat. All his instincts, sympathies, and feelings were 
with the Democracy, and they were everywhere looking up to him as 
their future leader. When the heart-rending intelligence reached their 
ears that he was gone, gone forever, down to the cold and silent grave, 
an almost universal wail of anguish went up from their midst; and the 
question propounded at his funeral obsequies, “Who shall speak for 
California, now?” was echoed from the Atlantic to the great Wast, ran 
along her lakes and rivers, and sounded through her valleys and moun¬ 
tains like the death-chilling notes of an ill-omened bird. ; ‘ Who shall 
speak for California, now, ’ ’ to the free people of the free States of this 
Confederacy ? 

Mr. Speaker, I repeat, Senator Broderick was, indeed, an extraordinary 
man. It may be said of him, in the language of Ireland’s immortal patriot, 
Emmett, “the man dies, but his memory lives.” It will be green and 
fresh in the recollection of millions, while that of others will go out and 
be forgotten forever Now, and in after years, when the public shall 
crowd the galleries, and look down upon the august men who compose 
the American Senate, the question will not be asked, who fills the chair 
at present ? but, where did Broderick sit? Unless all truth is falsehood, 
and history speaks to the future of the past with a lying tongue, no 
brighter name will shine in its annals, among the true moral heroes of 
America. He knew his duty, and, knowing, dared to do it. Mothers 
will teach the tale of his almost fabulous life, and repeat the horrid story 
of his untimely death, to their lisping children; and, as riper years come 
upon them, they will pilgrimage to the sacred monument which friend¬ 
ship is rearing to perpetuate his worth, and there pour out their oblations 


37 


over the dust of the noble martyr who fell a victim to his devotion to the 
great principle of popular liberty, and his love of truth. 

“ Oh ! bloodiest picture in the book of time,” 

Great Broderick fell, bemoaned, (i without a crime.” 

Go, student of American statesmanship, and look over the bright 
galaxy of names which adorn the pages of your country’s history; and 
when you come to that of the stone-mason’s son, learn from him how to 
model your own character. Learn what native talent and energy accom¬ 
plished for one who wooed fortune’s smiles, and started out upon the great 
highway of life, determined to win for himself success. As he stepped on 
hoard of a vessel in the harbor of New York, with no friends to aid him, 
poor and unknown, except to a few acquaintances, “ Where are you 
going?” inquired one. “To California,” he replied. “When are you 
coming back?” “Not until I am a United States Senator.” A wild 
shout of laughter went up from the bystanders at what was regarded as 
his visionary idea. Yet in eight years he did come hack a Senator, and 
in two more acquired a deathless national fame. If the politicians of the 
golden State had been congregated upon the wharf of San Francisco, as 
he stepped for the first time upon it, a stranger to all, and scarcely with a 
penny in his pocket, how they would have jeered at the idea that there 
came a young man who would throw them from his path with a giant’s 
strength, and rush by them with almost the speed of thought to the highest 
position ! It hardly appears, indeed, that he labored up the soiled and 
worn way, but “ down from higher regions came, and perched him there 
to see what lay beneath.” 

But, Mr. Speaker, if his career was brilliant, it was, alas, for his coun- 
try, too short. In the bloom of manhood, and at the moment he was 
standing on the highest pinnacle of fame, he was cut down. “Death 
loves a shining mark.” The soil of his State drank his noble blood, and 
the crimson spot has not yet been washed out. How mournful is the 
thought! The seasons will come and go, and vernal flowers bloom with 
nature’s returning warmth; but, alas! we shall never look upon the 
face of our friend again ! Peace to his dust! I pretend not to say who 
is to blame. That, impartial history will determine. But I will say, that 
when the roll-call of California’s statesmen is gone over at the judgment- 
day, and Broderick is inquired for, more than one voice will reach the 
ear of the great Jehovah from secret places, “Am I my brother’s 
keeper ?” Farewell, my friend ! 

The resolutions were adopted unanimously ; and thereupon the House 
adjourned. 


KING 


PHILADELPHIA: 


& BAIRD, PRINTERS, 
No. G07 Sansom Street. 


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